


Craving, Slaked

by GloriaMundi



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms
Genre: Animal Play, Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Little Red Riding Hood - Freeform, Werewolf
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-03
Updated: 2010-08-03
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cross my heart," he says. "You'll be as safe with me as you'd be with your grandma."<br/>"Well, you never met my grandma," says Scarlett.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Craving, Slaked

Weather like an old damp blanket. Not quite raining yet, but it will before the invisible sun sets, somewhere behind Scarlett and off to her right. She's walking down the hard shoulder, every step another step away from Ash. Every step a step towards herself.

A red car, a blue car, two silver cars, an old white van. One of the silver cars has She-Wolf on the stereo, up loud as it roars past. Fucker.

The white van swerves in. "Where you headed, love?"

"London," says Scarlett. No point in being specific.

"Drop you at Staples Corner? North Circular, y'know?"

"Lovely," says Scarlett. She opens the door and scrambles in.

"Don't often see a lass on her own these days," says Mr White Van Man. "Not since the Ripper."

"Oh," says Scarlett, with her most demure smile, "I can take care of myself."

* * *

"I'm knackered," says White Van Man. "Mind if we stop for a bit?"

"No problem," says Scarlett. She's been checking him out: nothing obvious, but she likes to be able to recognise them again. He's good-looking, if you like that kind of thing. (Scarlett doesn't.) Longish dirty-blond hair, a bit greasy. One of those carved bone spirals in his earlobe. Green eyes, nice smile. If you like that kind of thing.

"Actually," he says once they're face-to-face across the melamine table in Little Chef, "I'm knackered. Late night last night, y'know?"

"Me too," says Scarlett, smiling at him.

"Mind if we crash here and head on in the morning? No hassle. Just reckon I'll be safer not driving tonight."

"Sure," says Scarlett easily, "as long as you don't mind getting me a room. And no funny business."

"Cross my heart," he says. "You'll be as safe with me as you'd be with your grandma."

"Well, you never met my grandma," says Scarlett.

* * *

Of course there's only a twin room to be had. Of course it's dark outside already. Of course it's full moon. None of this has surprised Scarlett at all. Since Ash, she thinks, she's lost the capacity for surprise.

"I don't even know your name," says White Van Man as they relax (his word) over a beer.

"I don't know yours, either," says Scarlett, sipping her Coke and looking him right in the eye.

"Jon Hunter," he says, readily enough. Later, she'll sneak a look at his driving license, just to see if her instincts are right.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Hunter," says Scarlett. It's not exactly a lie. "My name's Scarlett."

"What, like _Gone with the Wind_?"

"You what?"

"Old film, love. You mean you've never seen it?" And he goes off on one about Southern bells and tragic heroines and the like, while Scarlett glances at the murky sodium-brown sky outside and tries to look interested.

Later, of course, he's crowding too close to her in the cramped room. Trying to pretend it's an accident when his hand brushes her breast. All apologetic, touching too much, right up until she snaps, "I'm a _lesbian_, dickhead," (which is only about a quarter of the reason why she doesn't want him) and knees him neatly in the groin.

* * *

Outside is cold and noisy. Still too much cloud but the moon's up. There is a sorry copse of scraggly elms behind the Travelodge: it'll do.

It does.

She's found her four feet now. She slinks back through the shadows to the window of Jon Hunter's room, but it's empty. Maybe he's out looking for her. Maybe there _is_ something he can do for her, after all.

But o Christ Ashleigh. _Ash_: suddenly she's choking on a traitor-howl that she can't voice. _Ash_, who said _revolting_ and _messy_ and _I'm not_, Ash who couldn't get enough revolting and messy. Ash who bloody well _was_. Ash who thought it was sexy when Scarlett changed. Ash who let the wolf do what she'd forbidden the woman.

Ash who didn't want to, any more, and said she was going to report –

Somewhere a twig cracks. Hunter? Let's see who's hunting now, thinks Scarlett. Thinking of Ash has put her in a vile mood.

* * *

She can hear wet leaves squelching under Jon Hunter's feet. Okay, maybe it's somebody else, not him at all. There are usually plenty of people around service stations: truckers, tired families, salesmen, staff. But she likes to think it's bloody Hunter, with his oh-so-casual touching and his pretty smile (if you like that kind of thing) and his bone spiral earring and his eyes.

 

It'd be so cool to run him down, get him scared (like he probably thinks he scared _her_), get him wrong-footed, hunt and lunge and catch and break him.

 

There's something kind of hot about thinking of Jon Hunter sprawled out beneath her, beneath the dripping trees, skin all pale in the dark where it's not bloody havoc. He won't be able to see her the way she sees him. He won't know it's her, Scarlett. Which is actually kind of a pity.

 

The thought of warm blood in her mouth makes her .. yeah, it's turning her on. Scarlett is squicked: the wolf doesn't give a damn.

 

... There's something else in the wood. She didn't smell it before, but it's suddenly, immediately there, the olfactory equivalent of something popping up right in her face. Another animal. Another --

 

"There aren't any wolves in England," Ash had told her. Well, fuck you, Ash: there's at least two, and they're right here in this wood. Me and --

 

The other wolf is male; older than her, in his prime; has fed well in the last couple of days, rabbit and fish; hasn't mated for a while; reeks of humans. So does she, probably. Even if she wasn't ... what she is, it's hard to get away from the human world. Even here in the little wood, she can hear Whitney Houston from the Travelodge, and Highway to Hell cranked up loud on someone's car radio. Slanting light between the branches from the too-bright lights around the service station. The constant roar of traffic. The constant stink of people.

 

She can't smell Hunter any more. Maybe he's given up and gone back to the motel room. Maybe he's calling the police to report a missing person. Maybe he's dropped dead and the other wolf's had him for dinner. Which isn't fair.

 

The other's coming closer. She can ... yep, there he is, sidling through the layered light, eyes reflecting green, panting to catch her scent. Scarlett wishes she could laugh, because it's exactly the way Hunter was sidling around her earlier. If this wolf could talk, he'd be saying something dumb: "Come here often?" or "You on your own, love?"

 

Scarlett doesn't know whether to fight or flee. She can't think. The wolf -- the wolf that is herself -- doesn't exactly _think_, either: but it knows what it wants, and Scarlett ends up wanting it too.

 

It's not her first time. Wolves don't fuck like people. Wolves don't give a shit about love and loyalty, messiness, shame. Wolves flirt, though. Scarlett flirts: lifts her tail, prances around all playful, lets him sniff her, nips a love-bite on his neck when he gets close enough.

 

She aches with wanting it. Wanting it in her. It's pain and craving, sharp as sunlight and twice as warming. Her heart's pounding like a hammer by the time he mounts her.

 

Last time this happened she woke up hating herself. She's never fancied a man, so why should she suddenly roll over (literally: the ground is clammy with mud, rotting leaves stick to her pelt) for a dog-wolf?

Ash told her not to be daft. "When you're a wolf, you do what wolves do. Like being a were-straight, I guess." Ash thought that was pretty funny. (So did Scarlett, actually.)

 

She doesn't want to think of Ash right now. She's got his, his _thing_ in her: his cock? his dick? None of the words sound right. But oh the _feel_ of it. Her body holding onto his. His body inside hers. Growling low and close enough to make her skull vibrate with it. Teeth meeting, gently, in the roll of skin at her scruff. She's bucking up against him, trying to get it deeper and harder and more more _more_. It's kind of noisy. Some of the racket is probably her. There's nobody to tell her to be quiet.

 

Nobody here at all. Just a pair of wolves, fucking.

 

* * *

After, she wishes she could talk to him. Wishes she could say "thanks" and "that was great" and "wanna hang out?" There's only so much you can get across with smells and nudges and flirting. But that's the only language she's got right now.

 

His eyes are very green. Like Jon Hunter's. God knows what would've happened if she'd fucked Hunter. (The thought still makes her feel a bit sick.) Would she still have changed? Fucking Ash never stopped her changing. Fucking Ash was nothing like fucking someone with a ... a dick.

 

O Christ Scarlett misses her. Misses her so hard it hurts like monthly cramps. Misses her so hard it hurts like breathing.

* * *

The rest of the night is kind of a blur. Scarlett and her new friend sprint across the motorway and into deeper forest, where the trees are old and twisted. They hunt, kill, devour. (Was it a rabbit? Was it something bigger? They both eat their fill.) They run just for the sake of it, under the bone-white moon, up across the new-sown fields and through a shallow reed-choked pool where frogs and toads (not worth catching) sound the alarm. They couple again, in the gloomy hollow under a sprawling willow tree, and the dog-wolf bites Scarlett's neck hard enough to draw blood.

The traffic never stops. The flicker of headlights, the ebb and flow of engines, is like a river running.

The other wolf follows her back across the tarmac -- a blare of horns, a howl of brakes -- but by the time Scarlett's back among the scraggly elms, she's alone again. She can't even smell him any more. (There's bacon frying somewhere close, though.) And it's nearly dawn.

She wonders if Jon Hunter's stuck around, or if he's shrugged and given up on his hitch-hiker and headed on south. Whatever. He's left the window open, and once she's bare of all but goose-bumped human skin she climbs back in, too tired to do anything but faceplant on the nice clean sheet and drag the floral bedspread over herself.

* * *

It always feels like a hangover, the morning after the full-moon night before. Or at least it feels like a hangover _looks_ when her gran lets her watch telly. She's dry-mouthed, there's something foul stuck between her back teeth, she stinks of sweat and her feet hurt. She rolls her head on the pillow, knuckles sleep out of her eyes, and looks --

_Fuck_.

She's slept with a man. Fuck fuck fuck.

Scarlett clenches her fists and tries to get her head together. This is Jon Hunter (for lack of another name to give him). This is White Van Man who's going to give her a lift all the way to London. Away from Ash. (Thinking of Ash makes her belly cramp.) There's nothing -- apart from how she's kind of sore between her legs -- to say she actually slept with him. Anyway, she doesn't like men. Anyway, last night she wasn't ...

"Morning," murmurs Jon Hunter.

He's on the other bed, tucked cosy under the covers, but the room's so small that there's no more than a foot of space between him and her. He's _smiling_ at her. Fucker. Scarlett grunts.

"Sleep okay?" says Jon Hunter, stretching and yawning. Doesn't look like he wears anything at all in bed, not even that bone earring.

"Fine," says Scarlett.

"Up for another round, then?"

"What is your _problem_?" snaps Scarlett. "Just ... just fuck off, okay? I like girls. I don't fancy _you_."

"You did last night," says smug Jon Hunter. "Twice."

"Like hell I did!"

Jon Hunter turns over, pillows his head on his forearms, and smirks at her. "What's that on your neck, love?"

He's staring at her neck. Scarlett can't help touching the place he's looking at. Fuck, it's sore. A bite. _That_ bite.

"Second time, that was," says Jon Hunter. "Under the tree, with the frogs shouting their heads off."

"Oh," says Scarlett, lame as anything. Then, "fuck!" Then, scowling at her pillow, "oh my god. You're ... "

"Takes one to know one," he says, like a kid in the playground, and she is not going to look at him because he'll be all smug: he'll wink at her, and then she'll have to ...

"Fuck it," says Scarlett. "I never met anyone else who ... who did that."

"Me neither," he says. "Still reckon you don't fancy me?"

"I don't fuck men," says Scarlett scornfully.

"You did last night." He sounds indignant.

"You weren't a bloke last night," says Scarlett, and now, fuck it, he's making her laugh.

"But --"

"And I'm not fucking you now. Not like this." Okay, it might be kind of cool to hang out with somebody who knows what it's like. Who makes sure they're away from home the night of the full moon. Who's not saying "disgusting" and "messy" and "animal". But still: he's a man. "No. Fucking. Way."

"Twenty-eight days till full moon," says Jon Hunter. "Is it a date?"

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by TV On The Radio's _Wolf Like Me_ ([lyrics](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tvontheradio/wolflikeme.html), [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1-xRk6llh4)).  
> Unbeta'd, please let me know if you spot a glitch!


End file.
